In the previous post, I talked about how our gut instincts are not always the guardian angels talking to us. More often than not, the gut instincts are reflections and projections of a lot of other things including your school of thoughts.
I noticed a couple of things that were wrong with my nervous system and the gut. It obviously originated from the factors I mentioned before. As a happy experiment, I decided to go against my gut instinct and really try and calm it down in moments that had nothing to worry about.
This is what I did:
A). Force solitude:
Whenever I was working, I'd put in songs. Whenever I was not doing anything, I'd watch reels or stories. Whenever I was lying on bed preparing to sleep, I'd put some Youtube video on. There was no way I was allowing my brain to have its own thoughts in silence. There was no way my brain knew silence.
When there were moments when I couldn't have any background noise and was forced to sit in silence, I had difficulty with my nervous system acting up. My nervous system thought it was some kind of danger brewing somewhere. It was pacing up and down, the heart beating out of cage and breath starting to get uneven.
That's when I realised, I had to make sure my nervous system knows silence. Absolutely complete silence to even comprehend what's happening. It needs to know that there will be uncomfortable thoughts coming in, and I'd have to deal with them silently - but not by escaping from the thoughts. Not by muting the thoughts. B). When things go south, your gut will tell you things you don't want to hear. Don't listen to it:
As soon as there is any inconvenience in your path, your gut will say things like "It's about to go worse, you are devastated. I told you so!" That's when your breath will start acting up and you'll lose sight of the present and the facts, and go to the future and possibilities.
The moment you focus and run to the future, you'll completely lose sight of the moment you have now. This will make you make bad decisions. This will sometimes be worse than what might happen in the future to begin with. This is also called "Extremism". You'll start imagining the extreme situations.
When things hit south, downsize to neutral thinking. Look at facts unemotionally, look at what actually is a fact and then move ahead with them - but not looking at what your gut is saying. Explain your nervous system that it's going to be okay and you'll figure it out in the future when you have to figure out.
C). Tell your nervous system new stories and new possibilities:
You will have to explore the unexplored and teach your nervous system the possibilities that future could hold. All the stories that it never knew, you'd have to teach it all of them! You'd have to sit with it and calm it down like it's a kid about to panic because it didn't know any better!
Keep bringing your nervous system back to the 'Present' from the 'Future'. Make it stay there. Tell it - There's no danger right now, everything is under control.
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